There's a big sale on the Origin Store celebrating the first anniversary of the launch of EA's online store. They are offering a 40% discount on several PC digital download special editions. Also, MCV notes a Q&A from last week on GameSpot with EA's David DeMartini, who calls the service's first year "a huge success." He also offers a criticism of Origin's stickiness, saying this is something they need to address going forward. "Being self-critical of Origin, I would say it's not sticky enough. And we want to put features in place where we fully take advantage of your friends lists and gameplay activities amongst all of your friends so you can compare achievements," he says. "We want you to be able to challenge your friends, and to challenge your friends to play other EA games to try and achieve things that might even be across EA games. A lot of people are loyal to us and we need to reward them with that stickiness, so we're looking in that direction."

One of the big complaints about Origin is that their prices are terrible, and now I guess one one of the big complaints is going to be that their prices are too low. Yay gamers.

Nah that's just silly. People are just saying it's kind of hilarious that they say one thing then do another but that's life in the business world with the level of marketing we see these days.

Of course I want Origin to have low prices but I can live with higher prices if they do more to differentiate themselves from competitors. Right now it's just basically "the only way to get EA games" to me and it doesn't really offer me anything that GOG/Steam/whatever don't have other than that.